aadler | Reading

denise posting in

Hello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means

karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )

Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.

On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.

snickfic

Some Oasis recs for your enjoyment. One of the great things about the reunion is so many new people are writing fic. When I think about when I got into the fandom and there were like four writers total... It was bleak. But not anymore. :)

all through the circling years by

mainpopgirl, 47k.
Four months after crash-landing on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific, Liam and his fellow castaways, long presumed dead, are rescued and returned back to civilization. In Liam’s case, back to England — and back to his brother, with whom he finds himself rapidly falling back into old and familiar rhythms.

Friends, this is one of my favorite fics in this entire fandom. Yes it is a LOST crossover, except set in 2020 and really only using the crossover elements for the premise. Mostly it's about Liam and Noel reuniting after not speaking for ten years, falling back into old habits and trying to find their way out of them, and FEELINGS. God so many feelings. They're so good. The angst is real here, and so is the hope. The character voices are fantastic, and this author writes a great Liam POV, which is a rare treasure because probably 80% of the fic in this fandom is written from Noel's POV.

Everything about this is so good. If you only read one fic on this list, read this one.

The Long and Winding Road by

shameonskadi, 5k.
Noel keeps having these dreams about Liam. I never get tired of dreamsharing fic about these two. This is set early in the reunion tour and leads to their first sex in years and years. I love the intimacy here and the low-key D/s vibes and of course the feelings. Always the feelings.

(And) All That I Want From You by

Fishfucker, 28k.
Liam and Noel get stuck in a broken-down bus in the Mojave desert, which goes about as well as you might expect.

Another Liam POV fic, but one from his younger days before he mellowed. If you're looking for chaotic absurdity in your Gallagher brothers fic, this is for you, and yet by the time we get through Liam's days-long tantrum the fic brings us around to some real emotion as they work through some things together. Also the very rare 2000s-era fic, which I always appreciate.

Kenet by

matewan, 11k.
Liam is a shapeshifting dragon, and this changes less than you might expect. The author takes this AU premise and makes it a new lens to see Liam and their relationship through, and it's so cool! Liam, whose emotions are huge and fiery and has such a strong sense of certain things and people belonging to him: of course he's a dragon. The character writing here is delicate and lovely and never says too much. A good time.

snickfic

Meme nabbed from

sushiflop, who also has the coded text if you want to do the meme yourself.

Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)

1. What rating do you write most fics under? Teen and up. Basically anything with a "fuck" gets marked at least teen, whatever else is in it.

2. What are your top 3 fandoms?
What's listed are Buffy, Hockey RPF, and SPN, but if I go to the MCU page, which includes all my fics that are in MCU subfandoms, that has the most works of any of my fandoms at 95.

3. What is your top character you write about?
Sidney Crosby with 33 fics. Still, all these years later!

4. What are the 3 top pairings?
Sid/Geno (hockey, 24 fics), Liam/Noel (Oasis, 23), and Spike/Buffy (BtVS, 14). Yes indeed, those are my OTPs. <3 Fourth is Dan/Herbert from Re-Animator, which feels right as well.

Despite writing a shit ton of MCU fic, I was too much of a multishipper for any of my ships to threaten the top here. My highest was Carol/Yon-Rogg, and I only wrote 8 for them.

5. What are the top 3 additional tags?
Drabble (64), mpreg (50 jfc), and hurt/comfort (29). Zero percent surprised by the first two, but I'm a little surprised by the h/c count. I don't tend to think of myself as a h/c writer. However, I do like writing things that contain h/c, and I guess I'm good at tagging it when it applies...

6. Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag.
I only need to write two more Gallaghercest fics for that to be my top ship! To be fair a bunch of the existing ones are less than 1k long, so Sid/Geno probably still wins by wordcount, but OTOH one of those Gallaghercest fics was 40k, so maybe not.

ozma914

Thanksgiving in America continues to be one of the most traditional holidays. It still features the original four hundred year old activities of overeating, football, and complaining about Black Friday.

In the Hunter household, as in all of Indiana and much of the world that’s not outside this country, we battle the overeating. How?

By serving food that, the rest of the year, we hate.

Stuffing stuff. Cranberry things. Pumpkin anything. It was good enough for the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians, who the Pilgrims politely invited to share a meal in the new home they’d just stolen from the Wampanoag. The Indians brought a housewarming gift of deer, mostly because they didn’t want to eat cranberries or pumpkin.

But what was actually served at that original celebration? And did they really all sit down at long tables outside, in New England, in November? That’s a recipe for a nice heaping helping of frostbite.

The first Thanksgiving was a three day event, leaving one day each for the meal, football, and shopping. The Pilgrims were naturally dismayed to discover no mall or Wal-Mart in sight. Rumor had it there was a Target down the road, but both the trip and the name were a bit more dangerous at the time. They compensated by throwing another feast that third day, during which they discussed the football.

Governor William Bradford sent four men on a fowling mission beforehand. We don’t know for sure what they brought back, but it might have been turkey. It also might have been ducks, geese, or swans, which explains the song they invented about the meal and the entertainment. If it hadn’t taken so much time to memorize it, the song would have been “The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving”. That would have turned our holiday world upside down.

Why are game birds called “fowl”? Because they had no refrigeration. It was a warning: “Eat it fast, before it’s fowl!”

On a related note, this has carried over into football, which during the first Thanksgiving was so primitive it was watched on a black and white TV, with no remote control, or blimp. Whenever a player gets caught doing something that stinks, it’s called a foul. The spelling was changed during the Great Depression, when a letter shortage caused double U’s to be singled.

There was indeed an abundance of cranberries at the First Thanksgiving, mostly because the Natives used them as dye. (Good dye, although it tended to run in the washing machine.) By then the Pilgrims had run out of sugar, so there was no cranberry sauce or relish, or anything cranberry. That’s one of the things they were thankful for.

Potatoes were … absent. The Spanish had discovered them in South America, but they weren’t popular with the English yet. Instead they probably had seafood—lobster, clams, oysters, all that stuff you find on the Thanksgiving menu today. Actually, these days the closest we get to that is either oyster dressing, or “see? Food!”

Pumpkin? Absolutely: in their pie, their coffee, donuts, milkshakes … kidding—Starbucks didn’t deliver. They did have pumpkins, but no butter or flour for any kind of crust. They may have hollowed out the pumpkins, filled the shell with milk, honey, and spices, and roasted them in hot ashes.

I’m not making this up. I get paid to do this research.

A Fall photo taken from the office of my chiropractor, who I probably wouldn't need as much if I stopped overeating over the holidays.

I’m sure you’re all wondering what kind of beer they washed all this down with. I mean, Sam Adams, right? That’s the state beverage of Massachusetts. But no, it turns out they hadn’t had time to make beer, and didn’t yet have apples for cider, so they drank water. This helps explain all those Pilgrim paintings with dour expressions.

Add this to native foods like plums, grapes, leeks, and squash, and you get … *gasp* … a meal that’s good for you! It turns out health food nuts aren’t a new thing; it’s just that back then it was involuntary.

Interestingly, I found no reference in historical records about stuffing being served at the first Thanksgiving. I suspect the Pilgrims planned it, until the Wampanoag heard about the idea:

“So, once we get the birds ready, we’ll mix old bread crumbs and tasteless vegetables together, throw a bunch of spices on them, and stuff them up the fowl butt. Instant side dish!”

“Um … we’ll just take our smallpox blankets and go.”

Imaging how they reacted to fruitcake.

I would be personally grateful if you made my black Friday green.

The best thing to do on good Friday is stay home and check out our books:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember to be thankful for good books.

Current Mood: thankful

snickfic

I finally wore myself out on Oasis and Lord Huron for a minute or two, so here are some things I've been listening to instead.

In the Earth Again by Chat Pile (noise rock/sludge metal) and Hayden Pedigo (acoustic guitarist). A bluesky friend turned me onto this, which is a really pleasing mix between menacing electric guitar and beautiful, contemplative acoustic, among other sounds. The concentration of each varies a lot depending on the track. I still don't love metal singing, and honestly there's only maybe two tracks here that I would choose to listen to on their on, but the interplay of all the elements never gets boring.

Lux by Rosalia. I don't feel musically educated enough to really appreciate this, lol, but it's gorgeous! I do lose steam towards the end once things get slow, but I really enjoy the first half or maybe 3/4.

"House" and "Chains of Love" by Charli XCX. My most recent obsession. Apparently she's making an entire concept album to accompany the new Wuthering Heights adaptation directed by Emerald Fennell? Okay!! I'm only mad I have to wait until February for the album, because I love these. "House" is pretty far outside my usual listening, and she's barely even on it, but that big moment the tuba comes in and then she follows? Incredible. And "Chains of Love" is more conventional and might not have grabbed me on its own, but paired with "House," idk, it really works for me.

Is this what finally gets me to click with Charli XCX? Signs point to yes.

ozma914

Yeah, I Google myself ... what's your point? And I found out things I, the Googled, um, Google-ee, never knew.

Okay, so, Haunted Noble County is available in the Netherlands. No, seriously:

https://www.bruna.nl/engelse-boeken/haunted-noble-county-indiana-9781467156066

You can read it to yourself, if you can read it. Which I can't.

If one of you can't afford the book, go Dutch.

I haven't gotten around to contacting local libraries about getting copies of our newer books (I know, my fault), but somebody has. Somebody, specifically, in the Plainfield-Guilford Twp Public Library in Plainfield, where Haunted Noble County, Indiana, Images of America: Albion and Noble County, and Smoky Days and Sleepless Nights are shelved in new local history & genealogy. Or so I'm told. It turns out all of our books are evergreens, or more specifically available through the Evergreen library system:

https://catalog.evergreenindiana.org/Union/Search?view=list&lookfor=Mark+R.+Hunter&searchIndex=Author&searchSource=local

I found our 21Alive TV interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdh8YfU6JiU

Which makes us a YouTube sensation? No? But we're there, anyway.

"Missed it by THAT much."

Our publisher posted about us on Twitter ... I mean X ... nah, it's Twitter:

https://x.com/HistoryBoooks/status/1957025429329514775

Which, I guess there's really no reason for me to know.

This is also how I discovered I'm now a top 10 Amazon author. Well, sort of: I did make it to number 8, but it was in a subcategory. But the good news is, I can just leave out that small detail.

None of this really bothers me--they're just fun surprises. It reminds me of when I did an interview at the WAWK studio in Kendallville, and right after we stopped at the nearby Walgreens to discover Images of America: Albion and Noble County on a book display. I knew the publisher was going to try to get the word out: I just didn't know when or where.

The Netherlands thing was a shock, though.

It’s really not hard to find us, even without Google:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: Other than sales, an author’s favorite things are reviews and library reads.

snickfic

I have a big of a rec backlog now and am trying to work through it, so: here are a bunch of art recs from last year! (One of these days the little AO3 symbol will return from the war.)

Batman: Rainy Knight by

Reused, Batman, SFW. Incredible black-and-white digital piece. The composition!!

Wednesday Addams: Lazy Wednesday Afternoon by

Reused, Wednesday/Enid, very cute.

Cult of the Lamb: Two Bishops by

fayharley, SFW. Two very cool eldritch monsters on traditional media!!

Dredge: No one has ever asked by

araydre, Collector/Fisherman, SFW. Gorgeous colors and shadows in this.

Dredge: Sunset scene by

armadillomania, gorgeous impressionist scene of the fisherman by the lighthouse.

Stardew Valley: late night conversation by Anonymous, Krobus, SFW. Very cute pixel art of Krobus, some junimoes, and a fish.

Original work: anglerfish by

bittercape, NSFW. MERMAID ANGLERFISH. And it's in WATERCOLOR.

On All My Motions

“All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” – C.S. Lewis

Reading

Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!

fic recs: Gallaghercest

(no subject)

The Real Thanksgiving, More Or Less

music I have been listening to lately

Googling Yourself Is Strange

fanart recs